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★★★½ Abuse of Weakness Catherine Breillat has transformed her worst experiences into one of her best films. A director like Breillat herself suffers a stroke and succumbs to the wiles of a con man. Aided by Isabelle Huppert’s terrific performance, Breillat re-creates the mental state of someone unmoored from good sense but still with the insight of an artist. In French, with subtitles. (104 min., unrated) (Peter Keough)

★★½ Frank Michael Fassbender plays a mysterious rock guru with a giant papier mache head: Think Syd Barrett or Brian Wilson as a parade float. An entertaining curio with flashes of inspiration, the movie walks a line between cute comedy and a darker drama the filmmakers aren’t quite up to. With Domhnall Gleeson and a hilariously gloomy Maggie Gyllenhaal (95 min., R) (Ty Burr)

★★½ Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For In Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s latest neo-noir anthology, the fan-favorite Miller yarn of the title is the one that gets long-form treatment, and it has cinematic juice. Josh Brolin plays hardcase Dwight McCarthy, whose moral compass may have cracks but still points the right way. The other stories range from pretty good to not good at all. With Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. (102 min., R) (Tom Russo)

★½ If I Stay The limbo between life and death plays more like comedy than tragedy in this hackneyed adaptation of Gayle Forman’s popular YA novel. A car crash puts a cello prodigy into a coma. In an out-of-body state she wonders if she should resume her life. Most viewers would probably advise against it. (103 min., PG-13) (Peter Keough)

★★★★ Manuscripts Don’t Burn This film would be remarkable if only because it got made — by Mohammad Rasoulof, who has been sentenced to six years in prison and a 20-year ban from filmmaking for protests made against the Iranian regime. But it also triumphs as one of cinema’s great glimpses into the nature of tyranny and oppression. In Persian, with subtitles. (125 min., unrated) (Peter Keough)

★★★ Siddharth A parent’s worst nightmare unfolds as the 12-year-old son of an impoverished Delhi street vendor vanishes and the father must search the subcontinent to find him. Though the poverty might be prettified, the story is devoid of sentimentality, and it builds both in suspense and pathos. In Hindi, with subtitles. (97 min., unrated) (Peter Keough)

★★ Violette Martin Provost brought to life the obscure visionary artist Séraphine de Senlis in “Seraphine,” but does not succeed as well with the writer Violette Leduc. In part that is because writing is essentially uncinematic, and Leduc’s autobiographical works would be more rewarding to read than to watch being put on paper. In French, with subtitles. (138 min., PG) (Peter Keough)

★★ When the Game Stands Tall Jim Caviezel plays a revered high school football coach in the true story of Northern California’s De La Salle Spartans, a team that set a national record with 151 straight wins. The filmmakers mainly want to examine the rough circumstances and fallout of “The Streak,” which makes for a structurally glitchy inspirational exercise with all the drama of a Patriots preseason matchup. (115 min., PG) (Tom Russo)